| Opening Doors A HOUSING PUBLICATION FOR THE DISABILITY COMMUNITY |
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SEPTEMBER 2001 / ISSUE 15 |
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What's Wrong With This Picture?An Update on the Impact of Elderly Only Housing Policies on People with Disabilitiesby Ann OHara, Emily Miller, and Maura Collins Versluys OverviewBeginning
in 1992, the federal government enacted sweeping changes to federal
housing laws which made it legal to restrict or exclude non-elderly people
with disabilities from certain affordable rental housing.
Specifically, these elderly only laws allowed owners of federally
subsidized housing to restrict or exclude non-elderly people with
disabilities (defined as adults under age 62) from moving into public and
assisted housing funded by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban
Development (HUD). Using
data from HUD and two federal studies, the Technical Assistance
Collaborative (TAC) and the Consortium for Citizens with Disabilities
Housing Task Force (CCD Housing Task Force) have recently updated our
assessment of the impact of elderly only laws on the supply of federally
subsidized housing available for people with disabilities.
The analysis shows that hundreds of thousands of studio and
one-bedroom federally subsidized housing units are now legally
“off-limits” to people with disabilities looking for affordable
housing. Specifically,
these data and reports indicate that between 268,500 and 293,500 units of
federally subsidized housing are currently designated elderly only.
This estimate is on target with TAC’s original estimate of
273,000 units made in 1996 and published in the May 1997 issue of Opening
Doors. The data also suggest
that more subsidized housing owners will designate additional units of
housing as elderly only in the months and years to come. In
a cruel irony, these restrictive federal housing laws took effect shortly
after other important federal laws – specifically the Fair Housing
Amendments Act of 1998 and the Am Given
this increase in demand, the legalization of elderly only housing policies
potentially spelled disaster for non-elderly people with disabilities –
unless they could be mitigated by a substantial increase in other HUD
funding targeted to people with disabilities.
Civil rights attorneys and disability advocates were also concerned
about the incredible complexity of elderly only laws and policies.
It was feared that the owners of these buildings lacked the
capacity to implement these laws properly and that an increase in housing
discrimination directed towards people with disabilities was inevitable. It
has been almost a decade since federal elderly only housing policies were
legalized. Since that time,
TAC and the CCD Housing Task Force have monitored the implementation of
elderly only housing laws and their affect on people with disabilities.
Several federal studies have also examined elderly only housing
practices. This issue of
Opening Doors summarizes current HUD data and these various studies which
– taken as a whole – provide a clear picture of the negative
consequences that federal elderly only housing policies are having on
people with disabilities who need federal housing assistance.
continued
below |
A publication of the
Hundreds of |
What is wrong with
this picture? It has been 5 years
since TAC and the CCD Housing Task Force published our first policy report about
the negative impact of “elderly only” housing policies.
It has been over 10 years since we first warned federal officials about
the potentially negative consequences of these laws – unless a sustained
and pro-active effort was made to prevent discrimination, create new housing for
people with disabilities, and oversee the implementation of these laws by PHAs
and HUD assisted housing providers.
Perhaps the most surprising
aspect of our work on this issue has been the difficulty we have had – and
continue to have – in our effort to explain to federal officials what is a
very simple story. Ten years ago,
there were over one million units of HUD subsidized housing that people with
disabilities could access, and now 25 percent of them are gone.
It seems like it would be such a simple issue to quantify…with an
inventory of HUD assisted housing!
| We encourage you to make Opening Doors available to you members and constituents. All past issues are available on TAC's web site at www.tacinc.org, or on the Opening Doors website at www.c-c-d.org/doors.html. |
For this issue of Opening
Doors, we relied on data from HUD and two federally funded reports,
including one conducted by the U.S. General Accounting Office (GAO).
We must point out that despite our use of the information contained in
the GAO report to assess the impact of elderly only housing designation,
the GAO concluded in 1998 that elderly only designation had not
negatively affected people with disabilities.
Their conclusion was astonishing – and we believe erroneous – for
several reasons:
Fortunately
for people with disabilities, key members of Congress did not consider the GAO
report as the “final word” on elderly only housing policies.
What should this
picture look like? No one is arguing
that elderly only housing laws should be undone.
That approach was abandoned long ago, and was never realistic given the
broad support for housing for elderly people.
But what we have been arguing, and will continue to argue, is that
federal housing policies have virtually ignored people with disabilities,
especially since 1992. The single
exception is Congress’s commitment to provide new Section 8 vouchers linked to
designation.
Thus far, HUD has completely
ignored the discriminatory practices linked to designation.
Section 811 funding, which could help replace the supply of lost housing,
has been cut. Little effort has been
made to ensure that state and local housing officials direct a reasonable amount
of HOME funds towards projects that people with disabilities can afford.
Perhaps there is a little
good news in this picture. Disability
advocates are pleased to see the findings in the HUD funded study conducted by
Abt Associates. More than any single
document, the Abt Associates study proves what disability advocates have been
saying for years about designation. TAC
and the CCD Housing Task Force urge you to use this report to engage in a
dialogue with public and assisted housing providers in your community.
Convince them that they need to be thinking about both groups – people
with disabilities as well as elderly households.
The Editors
Before
1992, according to federal law, owners of certain HUD subsidized housing
developments were required to make these apartments available to both elderly
households and non-elderly people with disabilities on an equal basis.
Elderly only housing laws (beginning with the Housing and Community
Development Act of 1992) fundamentally altered this equal access policy by
permitting owners to greatly restrict or completely prohibit non-elderly people
with disabilities from moving into these properties.
These federal policies are often referred to as “elderly only
designation” and affect two different types of HUD subsidized rental housing:
HUD
Public Housing: Elderly/disabled public housing buildings owned by Public
Housing Authorities (PHAs). Nationwide,
there are approximately 500,000 studio and one-bedroom public housing units
currently subsidized by HUD. This
housing is affordable to the lowest income people with disabilities because
generally tenants are required to pay only 30 percent of their income for rent
and utilities; and HUD Assisted Housing: Privately owned federally assisted
housing financed through various HUD housing production programs (i.e. Section
236, Section 211(d)(3), Section 8 New Construction and Substantial
Rehabilitation, etc.) that have been combined with long-term Section 8 contracts
to make the housing affordable to the lowest income people.
At the time that elderly only designation laws were passed, there were
over 600,000 efficiency and one-bedroom units in HUD’s assisted housing
“portfolio.”
It
is important to note that before elderly only housing laws were passed, these
1.1 million apartments were virtually the only federally subsidized housing
units available for people with disabilities, including units that were barrier
free or that could be modified at no cost to the tenant.
After the Fair Housing Amendments Act and the
As
the number of people with disabilities moving into this housing increased in the
early 1990s, a great debate ensued which unfortunately pitted elderly households
against non-elderly people with disabilities.
The debate centered around the question of whether the “mixing” of
elderly households and non-elderly people with disabilities in the same
buildings was a feasible housing policy. In
the end, Congress decided that the owners of these 1.1 million units could
“reserve” them – subject to certain conditions discussed below –
primarily for elderly households. Despite
the obvious negative impact this decision would have on people with
disabilities, until 1997 there was no new funding provided to make up for the
loss of subsidized housing for people with disabilities.
Under
the designation laws, PHAs are allowed to create disabled only buildings as well
as elderly only buildings. Some
policy makers thought that by permitting disabled only buildings, the federal
government would solve the problem of where younger people with disabilities
could live. The disability community
has always been opposed to this “solution” because: (1) most people with
disabilities do not want to live in disabled only housing; and (2) disabled only
housing encourages PHAs to steer people with disabilities to poorly maintained
housing in marginal neighborhoods while reserving the more attractive housing in
desirable locations for elderly households.
To
assess the full impact of elderly only designation laws on the supply of
subsidized housing available to people with disabilities, it is important to
understand the basics of how designation policies are actually implemented by
housing providers. The two types of
HUD subsidized housing referenced earlier have very different requirements for
designating elderly only housing.
HUD
Public Housing Requirements
PHAs
must obtain HUD approval to designate public elderly/disabled housing buildings
as elderly only. PHAs obtain HUD
approval by submitting a PHA Allocation Plan which is intended to analyze the
impact of the designation and propose alternative housing resources (i.e.,
Section 8 tenant based vouchers) for people with disabilities.
TAC’s review of a sample of PHA Allocation Plans indicates that some
PHAs may not be requesting the Section 8 vouchers needed to replace the supply
of public housing units that will no longer be available to people with
disabilities.
HUD
Assisted Housing Requirements
Owners
of HUD assisted privately owned housing are permitted to have elderly only
policies without seeking HUD approval for these policies.
Because there are different rules that apply to the myriad of HUD
programs in HUD’s assisted housing portfolio, the designation of this housing
as elderly only has been very problematic. Currently,
without contacting each of these properties individually, there is no way to
determine if owners and managers of HUD assisted housing are properly using
elderly only policies. As will be
noted in the discussion below, this lack of an “inventory” of HUD assisted
housing – combined with the complexity of the designation rules – has, at
best, caused confusion and, at worst, fostered discriminatory tenant selection
practices by owners and managers.
It’s
important to note that non-elderly people with disabilities living in federally
subsidized housing designated elderly only are protected from displacement under
federal law. In other words, they
should not be asked to move out, or be required to move out because the housing
has been designated. Nor should they
be encouraged or offered incentives, such as a Section 8 voucher, to move to
other housing, unless it is clearly their preference and choice to move.
Assessing
the impact of designation involves two important issues:
Estimating
the actual loss of HUD subsidized housing units available to people with
disabilities as compared to the number of new subsidized housing resources
created by Congress to off-set this loss; and
Assessing
the impact that designation has had on housing discrimination experienced by
people with disabilities.
More
housing units are designated as elderly only every day.
Therefore, any assessment of the loss of housing from designation can be
done only as a “point in time” estimate will undoubtedly increase as more
buildings are designated in the future.
In
1996, TAC and the CCD Housing Task Force published Opening Doors:
Recommendations for A Federal Policy to Address the Housing Needs of People with
Disabilities which predicted the negative impact that elderly only designation
would have on the supply of subsidized housing available for non-elderly people
with disabilities. This report
estimated that as many as 273,000 units of housing would be designated elderly
only by the end of the year 2000. This
estimate represented approximately 25 percent of the efficiency and one-bedroom
apartments funded by HUD with project-based Section 8 subsidies.[i]
Exactly
how accurate was the TAC/CCD Housing Task Force estimate when compared to
information now available from other studies and reports?
Again, because of differences in the law, the answer to this question
must be provided in two parts:
The
loss of HUD funded public housing units owned by PHAs; and
The
loss of HUD assisted housing owned and managed by private owners.
1.
Loss of Public Housing Units
HUD
records indicate that through
Elderly
only designation has involved many of the largest PHAs in the
Table 1: Tracking the Annual Designation of Elderly Only Public Housing
|
Year |
Number of PHAs That Submitted Approved Plans for Elderly Only
Designation |
Total Number of Elderly Only Units Designated |
|
1995* |
26 |
23,613 |
|
1996 |
12 |
3,668 |
|
1997 |
44 |
8,289 |
|
1998 |
25 |
5,038 |
|
1999 |
25 |
15,090 |
|
2000 |
38 |
7,728 |
|
Through July 2001 |
20 |
5,218 |
|
Total |
191** |
68,644 |
**13 PHAs that
submitted approved Allocation Plans have applied a second time to HUD for
additional units to be allocated elderly only.
Therefore, these PHAs have been counted twice, once for each year that
they submitted an approved plan.
Table
2: A Selection of Public Housing Agencies with Units Designated Elderly
Only*
|
State |
Housing
Authority |
Number
of Units Designated Elderly
Only |
Date
Allocation Plan
Approved |
|
AZ |
|
264 |
|
|
CA |
Kern |
150 |
|
|
CA |
|
383 |
|
|
CA |
|
142 |
|
|
CO |
|
95 |
|
|
CT |
|
198 |
|
|
CT |
|
136 |
|
|
DC |
|
392 |
|
|
DE |
|
100 |
|
|
FL |
|
600 |
|
|
FL |
|
381 |
|
|
GA |
|
223 |
|
|
IA |
Des Moines
Housing Authority |
190 |
|
|
IA |
Keokuk
Housing Authority |
50 |
|
|
IL |
|
9,950 |
|
|
IN |
|
365 |
|
|
KS |
|
144 |
|
|
KY |
|
198 |
|
|
LA |
|
168 |
|
|
MA |
|
817 |
|
|
MA |
|
861 |
|
|
MD |
|
157 |
|
|
MD |
|
453 |
|
|
MI |
|
313 |
|
|
MI |
|
158 |
|
|
MN |
|
2,718 |
|
|
MN |
|
396 |
|
|
MO |
|
210 |
|
|
MO |
|
147 |
|
|
MO |
|
179 |
|
|
MS |
|
50 |
|
|
NC |
|
389 |
|
|
NC |
City of |
727 |
|
|
ND |
|
166 |
|
|
NE |
|
268 |
|
|
NH |
|
184 |
|
|
NJ |
|
300 |
|
|
NM |
|
146 |
|
|
NV |
|
570 |
|
|
NY |
|
9,849 |
|
|
NY |
|
904 |
|